Minorities And The Modern Arab World (new Perspectives)

Edited by Robson Laura
Description
In the wake of recent upheavals across the Arab world, a simplistic media portrayal of the region as essentially homogenous has given way to a new though equally shallow portrayal, casting it as deeply divided along ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines. The essays gathered in Minorities and the Modern Arab World seek to challenge this representation with a nuanced exploration of the ways in which ethnic, religious, and linguistic commitments have intersected to create ""minority"" communities in the modern era.

Bringing together the fields of history, political science, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics, contributors provide fresh analyses of the construction and evolution of minority identities around the region. They examine how the category of ""minority"" became meaningful only with the rise of the modern nation-state and find that Middle Eastern minority nationalisms owe much of their modern self-definition to developments within diaspora populations and other transnational frameworks.

The first volume to upend the conceptual frame of reference for studying Middle Eastern minority communities in nearly two decades, Minorities and the Modern Arab World represents a major intervention in modern Middle East studies.
Review quote
Over the past century and a half, numerous Middle Eastern Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities have experienced marginalization, violence, and ultimately displacement. These conflicts have led many to the mistaken conclusion that an endemic, immutable religious intolerance plagues the region. By contextualizing a selection of local experiences, the essays included in this book offer an important corrective.""—Joshua Schreier, associate professor of history, Vassar College

"...as a whole the book is a valuable guide that sheds light on the process of “minoritization” that involved most of the populations present in the region in the last century."- The International Spectator
Biographical note
Laura Robson is associate professor of history at Portland State University. She is the author of Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine.